POTENTIAL

The Covid 19 pandemic has send a signal to large segments of society what people with rare diseases have long known: Providing the world's population with targeted medicines and rapidly developing new compounds poses major challenges for the pharmaceutical industry.

There are countless research facilities worldwide where experiments and simulations generate both, many and large research data sets. This data contains information that provides answers to current research questions. The increasing amount of research data and its complex interrelationships require deliberate and organized handling to enable its accessibility, reproducibility and use. Loss of information during data processing, for example due to the change of doctoral generations, are avoided by a well-structured research data management.

Anyone owning a garden hose knows following phenomenon: if there is just one bend, no water gets through. It is comparable to the electricity in a photovoltaic system whose solar modules are connected in series.

Lithium and cobalt are precious raw materials. They form the basis of lithium-ion batteries, which not only supply cell phones and laptops with power, but also feed more and more electric vehicles with energy.

The energy turnaround requires the expansion of the German power grid by more than 5,000 kilometers. It is the only way the required energy, which is largely generated in the north of Germany with the help of renewable energy sources such as wind power, can be transported to the south.

Industrial robots that make people's lives easier are no longer science fiction. For example, they help with assembly, welding, gluing, stacking or painting in industrial processes. Until now, however, they have almost always been placed behind barriers or protective grids to avoid the risk of a collision between humans and robots and the resulting injuries.

It is not without good reason that crude oil is called "black gold". The fossil raw material is the world's most important energy supplier and, when processed into plastics, forms the basis of countless everyday objects. However, as economical as its use may be, the dangers for the environment are equally high, during extraction and during industrial utilization.

Practically everyone has experienced it: you get into a car accident through no fault of your own. According to the German Federal Statistical Office, around 2.5 million accidents occur on German roads every year. One of the main reasons for these accidents is human error of the person causing the accident, such as inattention, incorrect driving behavior or inability to react due to acute health problems.

It is not exactly known how many plant species die out on earth every year. Although there are studies, such as the "Red List" of the World Conservation Union, the figures fluctuate and it is not entirely clear how many species exist on earth at all. What is certain, however, is that the number of extinct plants is far higher than the number of newly discovered plants.

Oxymethylene dimethyl ether – OME for short – sounds more bulky than diesel and super. Nevertheless, it is Prof. Joerg Sauer’s, Ph. D. Ulrich Arnold’s and their team’s desire, that it should flow out of gas pumps at gas stations someday. The researchers of KIT believe that these organic compounds could offer a cleaner future in many areas of mobility.

On February 1, 2003, seven people died at an altitude of just under 70 kilometers above Texas when the space shuttle Columbia broke apart on entering the Earth's atmosphere. A heat tile that fell off unnoticed during launch was resposible for this tragedy; the resulting hole in the wing became Columbia's Achilles' heel.

What if you had an idea for a shelving system that was better than available shelving? How do you sell a system that is suitable for all kinds of room sizes, loads and volumes and has many additional functions, but is still not produced because the sheer number of ways the system can be used makes its usefulness for different applications seem abstract?

The facade shines in beautiful colors, the windows let in light and the roof blends in with the architecture. Hardly anything indicates that the entire house is equipped with solar cells and that every hour of sunlight is used to produce electricity. Entire streets and the entire urban surface serve as a power plant. This vision of a "better city" is outlined by PH. D. Alexander Colsmann from the Light Technology Institute at KIT.

The search for answers to fundamental questions in our universe does not leave Prof. Marc Weber peace. With his institute at KIT, the physicist is on the trail of the tiniest particles that form the basis of all existence.

Today, 25 years after the oil tanker disaster off Alaska, the name Exxon Valdez still stands for one of the biggest environmental disasters in maritime history. After the ship struck a reef, 37,000 tons of crude oil spilled into the open sea, contaminating more than 2,000 kilometers of coastline.

Researching molecular interactions within living cells, tissues and living organism forms the basis for countless developments in modern biomedicine. To develop new drugs, improved diagnostic methods and more efficient therapeutic approaches, the pharmaceutical industry and medical research industry require insights into cellular processes at the smallest level.

According to the United Nations, 1.6 billion people have no access to electricity. While population figures are rising worldwide, the development and expansion of a stable power supply is faltering. China itself invests billions in the construction for thousands of kilometers high-voltage lines every year. Also in Germany, the energy transition calls for modern, expanded grids.

The longest manned space mission by an astronaut lasted 437 days: over a year in weightlessness under harsh conditions. When it comes to supplying the astronauts with oxygen, chemical tricks are used. Since there is almost no oxygen in space, oxygen has to be carried along or needs to be produced on site.

Speaking is a complicated matter. To convert acoustic signals into words, humans need more than 100 muscles. Tiny contractions of the muscles result in different sounds. Communicating through speech is a years-long learning process in childhood. However, acoustic communication can also be a barrier, for example, for mute people, in situations where loud environmental noise makes normal conversation impossible or when speaking in quiet environments disturbs others.